


In saecula saeculorum

by depugnare



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Catholicism, Character Study, Dreams, Gen, Minor Body Horror, Mutual Pining, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Unrequited Love, but in reality they're just dumb, long winded metaphors, the James Flint is a lapsed catholic hoe fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-07 01:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15897813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/depugnare/pseuds/depugnare
Summary: Silver leans over him, a halo of light around his head, and Flint wonders again if he’d died all those years ago and now he lives in a purgatory of wants he cannot have.





	In saecula saeculorum

The church isn’t like the one he attended when he was a child.

 

It’s small and plain, only decorated with a few carvings and a large wooden cross on the wall. The pews are mismatched but well worn, the sign of an active congregation. But there’s no altar, no candles, no tabernacle looming ominously behind the pulpit. The windows aren’t made of the colorful glass that he remembers, but he can appreciate how the cloudy, sand pitted glass catches the light

 

It’s a church made for Nassau is what he decides, if people who lived in Nassau went to church like the people living inland did.

 

He lays down on one of the pews and gazes up at the ceiling and wrinkles his nose at the smell of the dirty straw on the floor that hasn’t been swept out in weeks. There’s no incense clouding the air and he remembers that protestants often don’t use it. Certainly not in a church this small. It’s a shame, he thinks, it would certainly help with covering up the smell of the cow pasture next to the church.

 

He stares up at the rafters, at the tiny birds fluttering around and chirping softly to each other. They do not seem concerned with human affairs, to the chaos going on outside. He doesn’t remember church birds ever caring for humans and his grandfather used to tell him that they were angels spying on him to make sure he paid attention during mass. That they would come down and pull his eyes open if he napped in the pew.

 

Perhaps that was why he grew into such a surly teenager he thinks. An angry boy who lashed out at everything until his grandfather sat him down in a chair and showed him that learning would strike back harder than his fists ever would. That teasing meant nothing if you proved everyone wrong.

 

He wonders what his grandfather would have to say about him now, laying here covered in blood in a church on an island he’s set fire to. A pirate doing what pirates do best and destroying life around him as he knows it.

 

Nothing positive he’s sure. He closes his eyes with a sigh, thinking of the tiny cottage he grew up in. It wasn’t much different from this church.

 

Except the windows had been clear and full of color from the ocean just feet away, the same blue as the sky.

 

The same blue as Nassau’s waters.

 

-  -

 

He dreams of Miranda.

 

He always dreams of her now. It’s been months since her blood spattered across his face and her body hit the floor, but she’s still there every time he closes his eyes. The hole in her temple is dark and gaping, the look in her eyes murderous, her mouth always open in a silent scream.

 

He wonders if she’s trapped in Purgatory.

 

If he dragged her down with him just enough to keep her from passing over. To keep her from Thomas. Again.

 

He wonders if he died in that house in London, torn to pieces by rage and grief, and now he is only a revenant, left to roam the earth as punishment.

 

“Let me go,” she whispers in his ear, the iron of blood heavy on her breath.

 

“No,” he says back, turning to look at her. Strokes a finger down her cheek, ignoring how her flesh parts beneath his touch, rotten and putrid.

 

“Let me go,” she says again, teeth shining through the split flesh of her cheek.

 

“No.”

 

This is the only way he can see her now, we he’s asleep and caught in the clutches of his guilt. Here in this purgatory of his mind.

 

“Let me go,” she says a third and final time, rancid, black blood pouring from her mouth and onto his chest. It’s frigid against the skin of his chest.

 

And a third time he denies her.

 

“No.”

 

She stands back up, birds fluttering down from the rafters to perch on her head, a feral crown of feathers and beady, black eyes.

 

“You will roam this earth as long as you do not let me go. As long as you cling to your guilt, your righteous suffering. You have inflicted the Mark of Cain upon your own life.”

 

It’s what she told him in life, but crueler. Merciless with the truth. Even more than Miranda had been while alive, and she had wielded the truth like a well tempered blade.

 

“Then I shall roam until I am satisfied,” he tells her, sitting up, her blood clinging to his skin like tar. “Until I can wash the mark from my skin.”

 

“It is on your soul,” she says, blood running from the corners of her eyes. “And no amount of blood will wash it away. No amount of suffering will balance what you have inflicted upon yourself.”

 

“I am lost without you,” he says to her, as he always does.

 

She gives him a soft, sad smile. Reaches out and tilts his chin up even as her body starts to crumble.

 

“You are not alone,” she says, as she always does just before he wakes up. “You are not alone in the world of the living James, it’s time you let yourself realize that.”

 

His hand closes around ash and his dream fades into nothingness.

 

Dark and quiet.

 

-  -

 

“There you are.”

 

Flint opens his eyes to the jarring afternoon light streaming in through the window and onto his face. A shadow appears, ringed in light, and for a moment Flint’s breath catches in his throat.

 

Then Silver’s face comes into focus and he sighs, relaxing again. Silver leans over him, a halo of light around his head, and Flint wonders again if he’d died all those years ago and now he lives in a purgatory of wants he cannot have. He wants to reach up and wind his fingers through that soft, dark hair and pull Silver in for a kiss. Wants to press him down onto the floor and take him apart, to see the face he makes in ecstasy.

 

But Flint cannot have that, and he sits up, blearily rubbing at his eyes.

 

“Had yourself a nap did you?” Silver teases, eyes bright as he looks down at him from where he leans on his crutch. “I’ve been looking for you for an hour. Didn’t expect to find you in here of all places.”

 

“A church?” Flint says, raising an eyebrow. “Surprised a monster like me finds peace in such a place?”

 

“Yes, frankly,” Silver says, leaning forward to brush the dust from Flint’s beard. “Though you have always been more tragic greek hero than monster to me. Personally, I hate these sorts of places.”

 

“I’ve tried,” Flint say softly. “But I find them peaceful.”

 

“Even knowing how the congregation would treat you if they knew the truth?” Silver says softly, studying him with those bright blue eyes.

 

Eyes like rain, Miranda would say. Melancholy and knowing.

 

“I think my murderous rampaging would present a more present threat than the fact that I once loved a man,” Flint huffs, stretching. “Besides, God has never seen fit to strike me down so far. I figure if he hasn’t done so by now, he’s not going to.”

 

“Arrogant, to presume what God wants,” Silver tsks, holding out a hand for him to take and pulling him to his feet. “Or so I’ve been told. Many times. From many different god-fearing people. Never was one for believing in that sort of thing.”

 

Flint keeps hold of his hand and Silver does not seem to mind.

 

“It’s hard to blame God for your troubles when it is mortals who have done you the most harm,” Flint says softly, and Silver looks up at him, startled.

 

“Yes, it is,” he says after a long moment of silent watchfulness.

 

Being studied by Silver has always felt like being watched by something more than human to Flint. Like Silver is something caught between this life and the next, utterly mystified by other people and completely understanding them at the same time.

 

Their hands are still clasped together and Flint can smell the heady incense of his childhood, sweet and divine. Silver seems to tremble for a split second, almost too brief to notice, before he goes still and calm again.

 

“Madi is asking for you,” Silver says, letting go of his hand and turning towards the doors of the church.

 

“Then we had best not keep her waiting,” Flint says, walking beside him as he gives Silver a teasing look. “Our princess is not one to displease.”

 

Silver scowls, hurrying ahead of him.

 

The sun shines amber on Silver’s hair, picking up the soft, dark brown that runs through the black, and Flint is trapped again. Stuck staring at Silver as he’s surrounded by people asking him questions, demanding his opinion. He looks like a mosaic against the backdrop of them, the green of his coat and the black of his hair and the roughened, dirt smudged tan of his hand.

 

He wonders if this is how the apostles felt watching Christ work.

 

“Captain!” Silver calls, waving his hand to beckon him. “Come and look at this map.”

 

As always, Flint goes to him, eager to follow. Presses against his side and looks down at the rough, stained parchment in his hands.

 

“It’s a map of water supplies,” Flint says, recognizing where the well on Miranda’s old property is. “A valuable find.”

 

“What about this?” Silver asks, tracing a line that cuts through the fields. There’s a cut on his finger, and Flint wants to put his mouth on it.

 

“A shortcut. One I’ve taken many times. This must have belonged to one of the farmers around here.”

 

Silver nods, handing the map back to the men that had brought it to them and tells them to go gather water for their encampment while there’s a relative lull in the action. Then he nudges Flint.

 

“Come on. Madi is at Mrs. Barlow’s place.”

 

“It’s not hers anymore,” Flint says, even as he follows him down the road. Silver looks at him over his shoulder.

 

“It will always be her place. No one else has moved in there. No one would dare.”

 

“How could you know that?”

 

Silver just turns back around, continuing to walk.

 

“The same way I know everything about you captain. It is still your home, and everyone knows how protective you are of your home.”

 

Then he doesn’t know everything he thinks he does, Flint says to himself. If he did, he’d know that Miranda’s house was no longer his home. This island was no longer his home. No, home had long since moved to nestle in the curl of Silver’s hair, in the curve of his smile, the juncture of his throat.

 

The center of his palms hold Flint’s world in balance.

 

“I suppose there’s some truth to that,” Flint says and Silver smiles, Flint can see it in the line of his shoulders.

 

“There is truth in everything that I say,” Silver says.

 

Flint knows. He’s learned where Silver keeps it hidden, behind his teeth, beneath his tongue, in the back of his throat. All the places one cannot see just from looking at him.

 

He quickens his pace so that he can walk next to Silver. Feels that they must be the last two people on earth as they make their way down the road, surrounded by nothing but half burnt sugarcane.

 

It’s a dangerous place to be. One that makes Flint want to confess things.

 

Silver chatters as they walk, talking about this thing and that, and that’s how Flint knows that he’s feeling off kilter too. Still has that same sort of wariness he’d had in the church.

 

He remembers that Silver once told him that he had spent three years in a home for boys and figures he wouldn’t have much taste for churches after that either. Flint was lucky to have had a grandfather who only required that he go to mass and did not give his time or energy to the church for their use. Had always said that he could be put to better use out on the boat fishing.

 

“I grew up Catholic you know,” Flint says suddenly, and Silver turns to look at him. Stops dead in the middle of the road.

 

“Well that explains things,” he says after a moment and keeps walking.

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Flint asks, striding after him. Damn him, he’s getting to be fast on that crutch. “What things?!”

 

“Your flair for the dramatic and your endless supply of self flagellating guilt for one,” Silver says, holding up a hand. “And I know I said two things so don’t start.”

 

“I do not have a flair for the dramatic.”

 

“You do too. I swear you must keep a little notebook of speeches with the way you carry on. But now it all makes sense. I feel sorry for you. For how you seem to think there is glory in your suffering.”

 

Flint feels like his knees have been knocked out from under him and he stumbles. Silver turns to look at him.

 

“If I find out that all of this is because you grew up thinking it was okay to beat the shit out of yourself-”

 

“It’s not,” Flint says dumbly, still staring at him. “I grew up going to church. I haven’t attended a single mass since my grandfather died. Hasn’t really felt right to since.”

 

“Good, it’s a waste of time,” Silver says viciously, turning away. “It’s just another ploy to make you grovel for forgiveness for something that needs no absolution.”

 

He sounds so angry, angry like he’s been so often lately, and Flint puts a hand on his shoulder.

 

“God was very different for Thomas and  for Miranda. It’s the only reason I was in that church. It made me think of her.”

 

Silver softens a bit, looking up at him with a bit of understanding.

 

“It is a place of memories for you.”

 

“It is, though I assure you, I never spent one moment in that church before today.”

 

Silver laughs and Flint smiles, feeling the warm of the sun on his face as he watches Silver’s eyes crinkle.

 

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Silver huffs. “The very foundation would have trembled had you gone inside.”

 

“I recall only a very faint creak of the floorboards,” Flint quips and Silver rolls his eyes.

 

They both start walking again, this time in a comfortable silence. Miranda’s house is soon in sight up ahead, smoke curling from the chimney as the light turns from the red of sunset to the purple of dusk. There’s a bustle of activity as they approach and it looks right, having people in the yard again and the windows glowing a merry yellow from the light inside.

 

Perhaps Silver was right, it was still his home in a way.

 

It certainly felt like it as he watched Silver make his way up the steps to meet Madi, who was waiting in the doorway for him. He leans down to give her a quick kiss before they both turn to look at him and Flint feels something warm bloom in his chest. They motion for him to follow and he does, as he always does.

 

Closes the door behind him without a hint of melancholy, soothed by people bustling around inside of the house, by the life filling the corners of each room.

 

“Come captain,” Madi says, hand on his elbow. “Have something to eat while we discuss our plans for tomorrow.”

 

It hurts less, to sit down at this table with other people. Finds that Madi sitting in Miranda’s seat feels right. Only a princess could have sat in her place, and Madi was a princess like no other. Silver sits down next to him, elbows brushing together, and Flint gives him a brief smile.

 

“First, before we discuss anything else, I believe we should take time to discuss how our captain here is a papist,” Silver says, a teasing glint in his eyes.

 

“I loathe you,” Flint says, and it could not be further from the truth.

 

"Likewise," Silver hums, grinning. Madi rolls her eyes and shakes her head, taking a bite from the plate of food in front of her as she dutifully ignores them.

 

It is good, Flint decides, to not be alone.


End file.
